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House Homeland Security bill denies civilian pay raise

By
Jack Moore

The White House has threatened to veto a House bill providing funding for the
Homeland Security Department, taking issue with many of the bill's provisions. The
administration also argued the House's overarching budget strays too far from a
spending framework agreed to last summer.

The House bill provides $39 billion in funding for DHS.

The administration's veto threat came shortly after House Appropriations Committee
Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) threw his support behind the bill in a speech on the House floor Wednesday. The committee
approved the bill last month.

Civilian pay freeze

The committee's bill does not include funding for a pay raise for civilian DHS
employees, a reduction of $80 million. The committee's version
includes full funding for the administration's proposed military pay raise.

President Barack Obama recommended a 0.5 percent pay raise for all civilian
federal employees, who are currently under a two-year freeze.

St. Elizabeth's, data center funding on hold

In addition, the House bill includes no new funding for the DHS headquarters
consolidation project or for the department's data-center consolidation effort.

The White House requested about $64.8 million to pay for the agency's
consolidation efforts.

House Republicans say they're supportive of the goal of reducing IT costs, but
that additional funding "has been foregone due to the need to offset significant
shortfalls in the President's budget request."

The committee's bill also includes no new construction funding for DHS' St.
Elizabeth's headquarters consolidation plan — an $89 million cut. The
bill does however provide enough funding for the Coast Guard to complete its
headquarters move to the St. Elizabeth's campus.

The administration also objected to a proposed $50 million cut for Federal Air
Marshals and several abortion-related provisions attached to the bill.

White House supports cyber provisions

The administration's statement does offer support for two key cybersecurity
provisions:

$328 million for the the agency's National Security Deployment and National
Cybersecurity Protection System, or Einstein, which defends civilian agency
computer networks

$202 million for a new continuous-monitoring program to protect federal
networks

In his prepared remarks, Rogers called the committee's proposed cuts "thoughtful,
responsible reductions," and said they "targeted programs with known
inefficiencies, program delays, excessive overhead costs, or those that simply had
lower budget requirements."

However, the administration said the House bill "would cost jobs and hurt average
Americans" and "degrade many of the basic government services on which the
American people rely."

Despite the administration's vociferous reaction, the committee's bill is still a
long way from the President's desk. It first must pass the full House and be
reconciled with a very different Senate version. The Senate Appropriation
Committee's bill
provides DHS with $45.2 billion.